


What Once Was Mine

by Dewsparkle



Series: The Ice in my Heart Seems Less Sharp (Now that I have You) [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dam / Sire parental dynamic, Family Feels, Hermaphrodites, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jötunn Loki, Laufey (Marvel)'s Good Parenting, Laufey feels, Loki Feels, Other, alternate POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 13:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11418930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dewsparkle/pseuds/Dewsparkle
Summary: Laufey had once thought that his first-born was lost to him forever, but not long after Odin-King's eldest brat and his witless groupies intrude on his realm and slaughters almost two hundred of his people, he finds himself proven wrong.Also known as Laufey's point of view of the events in "Two Words".





	What Once Was Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shakari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shakari/gifts).



> At the request of multiple people for an expansion on Two Words, someone asked that I write it from the point of view of either Laufey or Farbauti. Well, here we are. I hope you like it? I wrote most of this while highly sleep deprived, so I blame that if some things don't make sense or ramble too much. Oops? If anyone notices a mistake, feel free to point it out and I'll try and fix it. :)
> 
> Enjoy?  
> (I hope its not too terrible xP )

Laufey was in his chambers when one of the scouts returned, frantically knocking at his door while trying to remain respectful to nir Kings status.

“What is it?” He growls at the intruder. It was the time of mourning for Jötunheimr, for it was within these days that the Aesir stole the heart of their realm and Laufeys babe’s life from the temple, abandoning those left alive from the war to die a slow death as the ice crumbled and creatures died, leaving less and less resources for his people. As with every year that passed, Laufey would spend these days in his chambers and complete the ritual of tribute afforded to those whose babes do not survive Jötunheim’s harsh conditions. It is a ritual that had been sorely out of use before the war, but is sadly now common place among his people.

“Laufey-King, we need you urgently. It’s the second Odinson, he’s here.” The scout stuttered nervously in the face of nir kings obvious displeasure, out of breath from running it would seem.

Laufey snarled wordlessly to himself. It seems the Aesir scum have once again intruded into his realm and interrupted the time of mourning for Asgards oaf of a first born prince to come barrelling into his palace, visibly itching for a fight to soothe his wounded pride and then slaughtering those who stepped forward to defend Helblindi when the Thunderer turned on him and crushed his ribs with his hammer, all for the mild taunt of the warrior next to him delivered. Thankfully, his second born is healing well, but the damage will cause him problems for centuries to come without the casket to rebalance his energies after such an injury.

Laufey pushes himself to his feet, easily towering over the young scout, barely into maturity as ne was. The scout led him out of the palace, which surprised him. He had expected the throne room like the last time. He’s led through the ice ruins, avoiding brand new chasms, and past the snow thickets and towards the snow dunes. It is there Laufey sees the other three of the scouts group, standing around a dark shape half buried in snow.

“Laufey-King,” the scout leader greets, inclining his head respectfully and stepping forward. “We did not wish to move him and risk harm without your word on what is to become of him.”

Laufey makes a sound of approval and dismisses the scouts to a distance and search for more Aesir, because it is unlikely one would come here alone. He turns back to the figure lying in the snow just in time to see a bloodied and slightly mangled hand drop into a steadily reddening patch of snow. Laufey leans over the boy and watches as dazed eyes flicker shut, but what catches his attention is the discolouration of the pale skin.

Laufey has not been much of a scholar since before he became king, but he is no fool. Loki-Prince’s skin is unusually pale by Aesir and even Vanir standards, and Laufey knows their skin discolours strangely when injured or the temperature not right. Too hot and they go pink and red, too cold and they do the same. In death they go grey and yellow. He also knows that extremities might turn blue in extreme cold, but this is different. The exposed pale skin is patched with a pale blue that is eerily similar to being some shades paler than a Jötunn’s deep cobalt blue.

Laufey frowns at the unconscious figure and settles down to one knee beside him. Cautiously, he reaches out a single finger to the closest wrist, gently pressing against the pale skin to check for a pulse. Instead of burning as Laufey had suspected, colour began to spread through the limb and darken it to match his own. He pulls his hand back and the colour half recedes, leaving the limb a mostly pale shade of cobalt blue from where it tried to revert to its pink fleshed shade.

Laufey frowns and brings a hand to brush against Loki-Prince’s arm once again, just resting his hand against it. Once again, the skin darkens and begins to spread. Raised lines slowly appear on the newly coloured skin as it does. It ends with the face and Laufey freezes in place, staring in horror at the markings that have formed on the slim face before him.

He _knows_ those markings. He had studied them with pride and tried with all his will to remember the exact way they shaped his too small babes face as he cradled nem against his chest every day before he went to fight and again when he returned, just in case it was the last time he’d see it. Only, he had thought it would be him that died and not his child (or stolen, as it seems). His hand drifts to the face without conscious thought, and he’s distantly aware that the skin stays this way, but Laufey is too transfixed on tracing the kin lines he has not seen in centuries.

He feels his throat thicken as he gently cups his hands underneath the body in front of him, and lifts it close to his breast. He moves in a daze back to the palace, deaf to the calls of those he passes, wondering why he is carrying such a small thing garbed like an Aesir.

He cannot keep his eyes off his child as he walks, studying his face and seeing features he recognizes to be inherited from himself and that of his child's Sire. He pushes open the doors to the healing halls and barks out a command for thick furs, and warm things for wearing, as well as bandages to be brought to him, carefully laying Loptr on the bed. He efficiently begins to strip his child from his sopping and cold stiff leathers and cloth.

His child is cold to the touch in a way which is not normal for a Jötunn, and Laufey suspects it is the sudden shock of Jötunheimr’s harsh cold, when the body had grown used to the heat of Asgard. Furs and thick trousers appear at his side from the healers and he finishes stripping the last of Loptr’s clothing, leaving him with nothing but the cloth covering his feet. Laufey hesitates a moment too long before redressing his child in the trousers, eyes longingly taking in the kin marks that had matured since he had last seen his babe.

Laufey pulls the furs over his child to make sure he is warm and frees the damaged hand. One of the healers had had the foresight to leave supplies to clean the wound alongside the bandages he asked for. It is grim work, cleaning the mangled hand while trying not to rip off the flaps of skin, for Laufey can see this wound was self- inflicted, and he is not positive he wants to know what could possibly cause his child to resort to such self-mutilation.

Once the wound is cleaned and dressed, he tucks the limb back under the furs and sits back in the chair of ice he’d created without realising upon entering the healing rooms. Laufey sits there for a long time, staring at the sleeping face of his Loptr.

He feels the urge to reach out and touch so many times, just to _make sure_ because he’s dreamt these things before. He’s dreamt of holding his babe in his arms again, of being a good Dam to his first-born instead of allowing him to be killed. For not finding his body to give back to Yggdrasil for new life. But he refrains, barely. It is wrong to touch when Loptr does not know, because his child does not know Laufey to be his Dam. In his mind, Laufey has no right to touch and to hold, no matter their relation. It physically pains Laufey to refuse himself this, but he also will not take advantage.

It seems that not only did Odin-King steal the heart of Jötunheimr and condemn its people to a slow death, he is also a Child-Thief, stealing Laufey’s own flesh and blood as his own, while slaughtering every other innocent babe that temple held in the adjoining chambers to the one that held the casket and Loptr.

Laufey can only imagine what cruelties his child has faced at the hands of Odin-Thief and his get. Laufey had sensed his too-small babe held seidr while still within his womb, but it would seem that he had failed to miss the signs of a Shifter in his child as well, too preoccupied trying to find a solution to the dwindling resources in Jötunheim.

Oh, his little Loptr must have been so scared, alone in that temple. Even the Casket so close would not be able to soothe the stench of death and Aesir flesh as they slaughtered all they saw. So terrified that he Shifted into something so fundamentally different to his physiology as to try and avoid death. Laufey could not keep the snarl off his face at the image his mind conjured.

His little Loptr, lying in his swaddling, alone with nothing but the Heart for company as all that was familiar was killed off. The hulking, pale, shiny form of Odin looming over him, weapon raised to kill yet another babe in cold blood, only for that babe to try and mimic what it saw above him enough for its would-be killer to hesitate long enough that the babe looked like a Jötunn no longer.

It would explain the rumours that always surrounded the second prince of Asgard. His unnatural paleness, dark hair and green eyes. His talent for magic and Shifting, the so-called womanly arts. The talk that he was never seen taking tavern whores to bed like his elder sibling because he was _ergi_. As a babe, Loptr would not have been able to perfectly mimic what little of the creature he could see, so how was he to shift what he could not? Perhaps he had retained his hermaphroditic nature? It is not unreasonable to assume, considering the inexperience. It was a show of great power that Loptr had managed such a Shift in the first place at his age.

Forcefully pulling his thoughts away from the past for now, he had to think of how to tell Fárbauti, what to do about Odin-Child Thief could wait until later. Fárbauti was on a hunting trip and would not be back for a few more days yet, if they were lucky enough to catch enough to feed their designated section of the palace, so Laufey would have to wait as sending a messenger would be useless without knowing exactly where they have been forced to hunt.

So Laufey sits and waits, looking at his child and thinking of all the ways their first proper meeting after all these centuries could go. His mind, the traitorous thing it was, insisted on displaying only the worst of outcomes. Up to and including Loptr killing him in an attempt to prove himself to be Aesir and not Jötunn. Laufey scoffed despite himself, that was ridiculous.

Some hours later, Laufey notices that Loptr has begun to shift more in his sleep, breathing picking up slightly as he begins to awaken. Leaning forward, Laufey watches as his child’s eyes flutter, but remain closed. His child shifts again and flinches, a whimper escaping him, before trying to curl in on himself and nearly dislodging his furs.

Laufey stands and walks over to the bed, kneeling down and gently using a hand to prevent the action and forcing him to lay flat on his back once more, readjusting the furs so they are not at risk of falling off. His face creases in worry when his child whimpers again and reaches over the bed to collect a concoction to ease the pain and help his child sleep.

Slipping a hand under the small head and lifting it to a safe drinking angle, he presses to cup to dry lips and gently tilts it so the liquid trickles through. Loptr’s lips part enough to drinking and Laufey must massage his throat to encourage him to swallow when he does not seem to be doing so on his own. It would do no good for his elskede to choke.

Tension quickly fades and his little Loptr’s body goes limp once more, a small sigh escaping his lips. Unable to resist touching now that he has, Laufey strokes his fingers through Loptr’s shoulder length black hair and begins to hum a lullaby he had oft sung to his babe.

As Loptr relaxes back into slumber, Laufey cannot help but marvel at how much of himself and Fárbauti he can see in his features. It was almost exactly as Laufey had picture his Loptr as an adolescent, despite knowing he would never know what his first-born would have grown to look like. But that again allows him to awe at his child. He had believed he would never see his babe again, even in death for they had had no body to complete the send-off into the afterlife to become part of the Great Tree once more.

Laufey wakes late the next day, having accidently fallen asleep resting against the side of his child’s bed. Sitting up, he finds he has an audience. Helblindi and Býleistr are staring at him as though he has suddenly turned into a Fire Giant. Gazing steadily back at them, he gives his second and third-brn an expectant look.

“Sire…” Helblindi starts, obviously confused an unsure of what to say. Helblindi looks much more like his Dam Fárbauti rather than Laufey, with his height and broad shoulders, though he lacks Fárbauti’s hair. Býleistr, meanwhile, takes after Laufey. Býleistr is not as slim and lean muscled as Laufey is, but he is certainly not as bulky as his elder brother.

Helblindi had been born not long after the war and was around a decade younger than Loptr, Fárbauti having become with child not long before the war ended. It had been unintentional, and had added to and soothed the heartbreak and devastation that came with losing Loptr.

Býleistr was also an accident. After the supposed death of Loptr, Laufey had not intended to bear children again. It was difficult, feeling Býleistr grow inside him and being unable to think of how it felt when Loptr was in his womb, seidr a comforting blanket around his being as the babe grew stronger. But he managed, and Býleistr was healthy for the most part. At a century younger than his brother, Býleistr was one of the first babes to experience growth without the Casket to aid the balance of energies. He was lucky, surviving past infancy with no serious malformations other than his seven toes and longer left arm.

“Dam, who is that?” Býleistr finally spoke up, unusual considering he was the shyer of Laufey’s brood. But he was hiding behind his elder brother, head barely reaching Helblindi’s ribs.

“That my children, is your elder brother, Loptr.” Both his sons stare at him in disbelief.

“But Sire, Loptr was killed…” Helblindi starts hesitantly, probably fearing something has finally snapped within Laufey’s mind.

“So we thought. We never found Loptr’s body. Come here, look at his kin lines. They speak for themselves, do they not?”

Helblindi and Býleistr walk forward and peer at the face of their elder sibling, faces instantly showing shock as they realise that yes, this is indeed their elder brother. They look up at him in confusion, obviously asking for answers. He motions them away from the bed just in case they disturb Loptr’s rest.

Helblindi moves his torso wrong and grimaces, hissing in pain and wrapping an arm around his middle. Býleistr starts and rushes off only to quickly return with a vial of the same potion Laufey had administered to Loptr some time ago. Helblindi smiles thankfully and downs the sweet liquid.

Laufey frowns in concern, but when it seems Helblindi has not damaged himself further he sets them both on his knees, something they have not done much as of late.

“It appears that when the Aesir stole the Heart, they also stole your sibling. You know of the second Aesir prince, yes?” They both nod. “I do not know if Fárbauti or I ever told you this, but we knew that Loptr would have a talent in seidr long before he was born. What we know now is that Loptr was a Shifter. I presume that he changed his form out of fear and Odin-Thief decided to keep him as his own.”

“He has been living in Asgard this whole time?!” Helblindi exclaims in horror. “But it is so hot!”

Laufey quickly shushes them, glancing at the still sleeping form of his first son. “Quiet. Yes, it is hot in Asgard. I suspect that this will have damaged him, so he will be unused to our winters. The healers will be able to tell us more once he has awoken, they are too busy to look now. They have more higher priorities right now.” Yes, all the remaining healers were tending to those who survived the Thunderer’s deadly tantrum. There were so many casualties and his people are still succumbing to their wounds days later.

A horn sounded in the distance causing the three of them to look up. “The hunting party!” Býleistr exclaims. “Sire has returned!”

“Go and greet Fárbauti, then tell nir that I am waiting in the here. Do not mention Loptr, I will tell nir when ne gets here.”

They both leave after another long glance at Loptr and Fárbauti arrives not long later.

“Laufey why did you-,“ Ne froze, staring at the form on the bed, face barely visible under the furs where Loptr had moved in his sleep. “Great Ymir…” eFárbauti has not yet laid eyes on him, and Laufey cannot blame nem. He has barely slept and taken care of his body’s need for sustenance as he watches over his eldest child.

“It is a miracle,” Laufey begins, standing with some effort, limbs stiff from sitting for so long. “Fárbauti… Loptr yet lives and has been returned to us.” He feels his throat thicken and his eyes sting. Now that his spouse is here, and he says the words aloud, they seem all the more real and the reality of it all abruptly crashes down upon Laufey’s shoulders.

 _His child is **alive**_.

Fárbauti catches him around the waist as he slumps against nem. Ne finally tears nir gaze away long enough to properly look at his condition. “My love… when did you last rest? You look unwell.”

Laufey leans against Fárbauti and inhales nir gentle, if faded, scent of winter and crushed Vinterbær used to scent nir skin when bathing. He shakes his head against nir shoulder. “It matters not. Loptr is _alive_ , elskede! My child lives…” He breaths unsteadily against Fárbauti, mentally combing over that simple sentence. _My child lives._

It is a common misconception that Laufey was a cold King. In his earlier years of rule, he had been well loved by his people and he found enjoyment from his position. It was not naivety, that made him feel so, however. For even during the stress of Jötunheimr’s resources running low, even with the power of the Casket to balance the energies of the realm, and then later the war with Asgard, he had never been cold or cruel. After the dust had cleared, so to speak, was another story.

Too many dead, so much destroyed. Food was scarcer and fish had fled the taint of blood in their waters. The casket was gone, almost all the children and babes slaughtered simply for being what they were. His child among the many. His little Loptr.

Loptr… his runt of a child. So small, so warm with seidr in his infancy. Gone. Not even a body to mourn, to hold one last time.

The Aesir had taken more than they had right to. They speak of honour and defending the realms… but where were they when Laufey asked their assistance? Feasting in their golden halls and stuffing their faces for the sake of it. Eating and eating and eating while Laufey’s people grew hungrier and hungrier. Jötunheimr is not built to support much life in the way of plants, and even the animals they can safely consume are scarce and neigh impossible to breed for farming.

The Casket, while powerful, could not help with problems such as the Jötunn people were faced with. The Casket balanced energies and increased their health by doing so, but it can do nothing for the shortage of resources.

Fárbauti nods and presses and kiss to his head, breaking him from his wandering thoughts. “Come, rest.“ Fárbauti silenced any protest on his lips with a look and a firm squeeze of the arm supporting him. “I will watch over Loptr until he awakens, and if he does so before you return I will inform him of what has occurred. I suspect I may also have to correct his knowledge of the past if he was raised as an Aesir.”

With some feeble, half-hearted resistance, Laufey allowed Fárbauti to drag him off to their chambers and forcefully push him back onto their shared bed-furs. Laufey will later deny that he drifted off before Fárbauti had fully closed the door.

He fell asleep with dreams and half night-terrors of meeting his lost child properly for the first time in nearly a thousand years.


End file.
